of the poor remained, struggling without skills or resources to scratch out a living from the land. If you imagine the kind of doomsday scenario painted in movies like The War of the Worlds or Terminator, in which society as we know it has been reduced to rubble and ash and a few shell-shocked human beings remain, desperately trying to keep themselves alive among the ruins, then you won’t be too far off the mark of what life must have been like for those who remained in Judah. Just substitute the